One Month of Denim - Day 12

Let's keep it short today. The cinch back was a widely used up until the Second World War. It was used instead of a belt to tighten the waist on pants, hence the lack of belt loops on early jeans. Belt loops were added by Levis in the 1920's, but the cinch back remained for another good 20 years, until it was scrapped.

The cinch back seemed like an archaic and slightly boring detail, but after having read the book "Jeans of the Old West", I got a totally different perspective on that detail. Now, I still find it quite costumey, but I now find it quite inspiring and I may just get a pair of jeans with a cinch back one day.

Some time ago I discovered, that the author of "Jeans of the Old West" and denim hunter/collector, Michael Harris has an amazing Flickr account. You should check it out here - and by "check it out", I mean, spend some hours soaking in the stunning images - there are small movie clips too.

One Month of Denim - Day 1

This might be a huge project, but I figured that I would make September a month of denim. Therefore I intend to make 1 post a day on the subject of denim and I will be doing it in a random order. Some posts will of course be longer than others, as I have more time on some days. This is an introduction to the subject of denim, but I hope there will also be some for the denim connoisseur.

I'm mainly doing this because the denim culture in Denmark is pretty weak and hopefully this will inspire some Danes to dig deeper into denim history and culture.

To hit things off I would like to recommend some reading on the subject of denim.

Paul Trynka has written a great little book called "From Cowboys to Catwalks", which is one of the best introductions to denim if you know some, or very little. And by that I don't mean that you won't be referring to it after a while because you probably will. It should also be mentioned that Paul Trynka is very easy to get hold of, if you have any denim related questions, as he is a very active and most helpful user on the two big fashion fora - Superfuture and Styleforum. You'll most likely find him in the threads about Levi's Vintage Clothing (LVC for people in the know).

It should also be said that Superfuture is a great source for information, as there are many people who has a genuine interest and a lot of knowledge, but you have to remain sceptic.

The denim collector and denim hunter, Michael Harris, has written a great and extremely inspiring book on pre 1900 denim called "Jeans of the Old West". Though the subject may be a bit niche, it gives you a totally different aspect to wearing denim. Michael has been hunting denim in the Arizona desert for a long time and he has been trying to recreate the history of the old denim companies together with his wife. Levi's weren't the only company making dungarees and the book covers some of the forgotten companies, but it also focuses on Levi's and the book tries to put together the puzzle that is Levi's pre 1906, when the company was hit by a fire after a big earthquake. Michael Harris has since been working together with the Rising Sun company to create a beautiful pair of jeans that were based on his finds.

David Little wrote a book called "Vintage Denim" back in the 90's. The book is quite good and can also be used as an introduction to the subject. At some point it was an collector's item of sorts, but you can sometimes find it relatively cheap on eBay.

If you want more material on denim, you need to buy expensive Japanese Magazines (or rather books) like Lightning magazine, Mono or Free & Easy. All have fortunately been getting a bigger distribution lately - check Sivletto and Superdenim for instance.

Hopefully I'll be able to make similar months on different subjects. But let's see how this goes first, as I feel this is a rather big task.